


Nowhere to go but Up (literally)

by Saxifactumterritum



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-12 07:50:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19942711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saxifactumterritum/pseuds/Saxifactumterritum
Summary: for the prompt:'John Sheppard falls down a hole. Okay, it’s a deep hole, but he’s okay, he can climb out, no need to call Ronon, or Teyla, or let Rodney find out. :D :D :D That might be the concussion talking.'





	Nowhere to go but Up (literally)

**Author's Note:**

> Estefee gave me this awesome prompt 
> 
> if you wanna prompt me, you can, here or on tumblr or on pillowfort (I'm saxifactumterritum everywherE)

John hasn’t really got that whole superman thing going on. He does okay in a fight and he trains to smooth away his weaknesses there, but he loses plenty all the same. He always used to say he hit the ground so much because he preferred seeing the sky to  _ your ugly mug _ . Whoever ‘you’ happened to be at the time. These days it’s usually Ronon or Teyla, or both of them. He has a pretty good grasp on strategy, he’s awesome at finding the best plan to win a fight, feeling out his people’s strengths and using them, using what intel they have to exploit their enemy’s weaknesses. He’s also getting good at escaping. He has, by now, been in enough prisons and bad situations to have a good grasp on the whole escaping thing, in the Pegasus galaxy and on Earth. He’s got himself into enough holes to be excellent at getting out of them. 

This one, though, seems to be defeating him. 

None of his skills are helping. Silver lining; at least it’s not his lack of skills that’s keeping him here. 

The problem is that it’s a literal hole. None of that wishy washy figurative crap.

John reaches out, again, ignoring the tight hot pain in his wrist, again, and brushes his fingers against the earthy walls of his current predicament. Again. He’s sure he hasn’t broken his wrist, he’s broken bones before and this doesn’t feel like that. Besides, he can bear to use his hand, he could bear the pain okay when he tested if he could put pressure on it. His side hurts more than his wrist, and his head. He might have wrenched something in his hip, by the feel of it, like something’s too stretched out and won’t click back. He’s pretty screwed, by his estimate. 

He tips his head back, dirt falling onto his shoulders and into his hair, and looks up, up, up at his small square of sky;  _ that little tent of blue which prisoners call the sky _ . Who wrote that? Ronon would probably know. He’s taken to reading poetry, even joined a poetry group. Atlantis is a lot like college, with the societies and special interest clubs, sometimes. John’s been watching the sun to try and keep track of time passing, not for poetry. If he waits much longer it’s going to be night and he’s not sure he can survive not being able to see the sky. 

If he can’t see the sky, if he can’t see, if it’s dark... He shudders, scrambling up to his feet, feeling again that he’s covered in creepy-crawlies, hundreds of tiny legs, sharp scratching clicks and chitters in the dark. It’s just the loose dirt. It’s just dirt that’s squirming down through his clothing. Just dirt, just dirt, just dirt, nothing but dirt and damp and rock. He bends again to check that he bloused his pants and tied his laces properly this morning. No bugs are getting in his pants that way. 

When he straightens he feels again over the side of his face, fingering the radio there. He should probably just call Teyla and Ronon to come get him out of here, or at least call Rodney. Last time he ended up in the infirmary for tripping over his own feet while sparring, Doctor Gush, the LT who runs the night-shift in the infirmary (there's something wrong with that thought... Not the night shift?...), had threatened to call up John’s buddies in the Air Force and suggest a renaming. Not that John particularly liked his call-sign ‘Boomer’, back in Afghanistan and flying combat, before he’d transferred to Antarctica and become the designation of his helicopter. He’d only broken the sound barrier a few times in training, he’d just wanted to go fast. But Boomer was far, far better than Damsel. He refuses to be Damsel. Rescued from himself indeed. Figurative  _ crap _ .

He didn’t even trip over his feet this time, or he’s pretty sure he didn’t anyway. He can’t quite recall. That’s worrying, along with the nagging feeling that he’s getting things wrong. He fingers his radio again, and gropes wildly for other reasons he isn’t calling Rodney. There are more reasons. His mind’s boggy, though, things crumbling away like the mud, the walls of his prison. He takes a step, planning to walk across the space and see if the other side might be less earthy. Something taps his boot and he makes a sharp, undignified noise,  _ bugs bugs bugs giant bugs _ running through his mind and making things tilt and spin until he’s on all-fours, crouched, shivering. 

It’s not a bug, it’s a canteen of water with a baggy of power bars tied on. Huh. Must’ve fallen out of his pack or something. He sits and eats and drinks, trying not to think about bugs. It works, at first, until something really does skitter over his ankle. He throws the canteen at it and feels wet over his ankles, into his boots. He thinks he’s bleeding and is thrown dizzyingly back to those horrible hours with the iratus bug latched onto his neck, the seering pain and fear give him a shot of adrenaline that gets him up and across to the wall, gasping for breath. Ok, so his side  _ really  _ hurts now, and he might’ve done something to his ankle, too. At least his hip’s just throbbing. His breath wheezes in and out as he gasps for breath, trembling, holding still so the bugs go away. 

“I really don’t like bugs,” he whispers. 

John looks up at his slice of sky again and wishes he was up there, held aloft by rotor blades and aerodynamics and math. Well, he doesn’t need that, he decides. He’s always been good at climbing, he can just climb out. Rodney never needs to know that he fell in a hole of all the stupid things. He doesn’t need superpowers to save him, doesn’t need Ronon and Teyla and their super-duper fighting skills; he will remain Boomer. He nods, solidifying his resolve. This is a good plan. Climb out, what could be easier? Dave was better at all the team sports, but John had been able to run like hell when he was younger, he won awards. He’d been a damned good climber, too. He got some certificates. His father had preferred the awards, but John liked the certificates. They attested to his skill, not his opponent's defeat. There was no one to defeat in climbing except yourself, your own fear, your own exhaustion.

John feels up as high as he can, earth falling around him. The walls aren’t quite vertical. It’s wider down at the bottom than the top of his reach, and as he shuffles along, he finds a root. If he can haul himself up, maybe he can get his back against one wall and shove his way up. There was that  _ Star Trek  _ episode… he searches his pockets and finds one of Ronon’s knifes. Good. That’s two hand-holds already. He starts up, kicks his toes in, reaches higher. He falls twice before he gets that second, higher hand hold with the knife, he can then pull himself up and… he reaches with his feet, shoving, letting go his lower hold. There. His hip’s screaming at him, his breathing’s coming wrong because of whatever he’s done to his side, and he’s trembling, but he’s up. Up is good. Jammed between two sides of the hole. When he reaches up, he finds rock. 

Rock is easier to climb than crumbling earth, he gets a whole metre or so while the side is rock, then jams himself across the hole again and rests, breathing hard, body rebelling. He might fall again and he’s quite high now, if he falls it won’t turn out so good for him. Fear swamps him for long, breathless moments, turning everything cold. He forces his breathing steady and assesses, lining up his resources, forcing his body not to shut down. If he can get his boots off he might be able to get better footholds as he climbs; an additional resource he didn’t have before. There we go, no need to panic. Won’t help if things get all crumbly again, he won’t be able to kick in so good. But, no, he might just end up bringing everything down by doing that anyway and this high he doesn’t want to risk it. Boots off, new resource; well done, John. 

It’s a bit of an endeavour to get them off. One hand and one foot at a time, moving slow, slow. He nearly drops them and his stomach flips thinking again of the fall, his head swimming dizzily. He gets them off and the laces tied and slung around his neck. He also manages to knock his radio off and as it falls he knows he should have just called for help. The fog clears and it’s so clear he should have just called, now he’s stuck halfway up a hole, and his father isn’t going to care about whatever he wins this time, either. At first John had thought if he won enough things, his Dad might take him on the business trips instead of Davey, might let him go on the planes and see the cockpit, but no matter what, it was always Dave he took along. It wasn’t fair. 

John loved football as much as Davey did, it just so happened that he wasn’t quite good enough for the school team so he couldn’t win the trophies for it like Dave. John secretly thinks that he would be good enough if his father didn’t want him to play quarterback like Dave. He’ll finish this climb anyway. Their father might not value this, but John does. He values the stamina and perseverance it takes to get past these moments of frozen terror when everything aches and he’s sure he’ll fall, stuck like a bug on the climbing wall. He moves careful, slow, and reaches, looking for his next hold. He’ll do it, and he’ll do it for himself, not for his father or for Dave. 

John can’t remember why he hurts so much. His hands tremble as he reaches, finding earth, finding places to get his knife in, climbing in quick spurts sometimes because everything’s falling away as soon as he gets hold. He can’t remember why he’s climbing, where he’s going. He taps his radio and calls for Rodney to check in, but gets no reply so he climbs faster, worried. He tries Teyla too, but she’s not here of course; Torren. Ronon doesn’t answer either, which is bad but hopefully he’s silent for the same reason Rodney is and they’re together. They make a good team. For a while Ronon was sure Rodney thought he was thick as two planks, but then Rodney had got wind of that and had yelled a bit,  _ do you think I’d trust my life to someone I didn’t think was damned smart? _

John’s foot slips and he twists, falling, pushing, grabbing anything he can. He manages to grip an outcrop of rock, get himself jammed in again, but he’s shaking so badly and he’s cold now, too. He rests, wishing he was home. He wedges himself in tighter, pushes himself a bit higher so he can hook his armpit over the outcrop, wrapping his arms around himself. He closes his eyes, thinks that maybe he should just call for help. He could probably live with the guff he’d get for falling ass over tit down a wooded slope. He’s pretty sure that’s what happened. He remembers the whirl of trees and a yell of surprise. He shuts his eyes and thinks about his team, clings on because they’re coming for him. They’ll come. They’ll be here. He needs a rescue, now, he doesn’t even mind about the call-sign. He’s tired, and he’s scared. 

“Colonel! What the- Bloody hell! Look at this, Kenan!” 

John doesn’t recognise the voice. He stays still, not daring to breathe, the bugs inching their way down his back. If he’s very, very still, they might think he’s dead. God, he hates bugs. 

“Hell. Move, English, let’s get him up out of there. You didn’t check if he could climb out? Jesus, we dragged all this crap from the gate.”

John screams when something touches him, but that just tightens the grip of whatever it is. He arches, trying to escape, kicking. 

“Fuck, fuck! Get that rope around him, forget the harness!” 

Something cuts into him, all the air dragged out, and the world spins. He hits the ground and fights, kicking, biting, gets his knees under him and runs. 

“Colonel! Colonel Sheppard! English, drop those and- major, this is Kenan, he’s coming through your way… no he’s on the run, he climbed out. All teams this is Kenan, if the colonel comes your way, take him down.”

John stops. He shouldn’t have dropped his radio. What he wouldn’t give right now for Ronon to fight these guys for him, he hurts too much himself. He hasn’t got much, he dropped the knife even. Then there’s the bugs. He shifts to the left, and bumps into someone. 

“Sir,” Lorne says, his shoulder and chest and voice familiar. 

“Hey,” John says, the world spinning with his relief. “Cavalry here? There’s bugs.”

“Yes sir,” Lorne says. A radio clicks twice. “I’ve got him, Kenan. Headed for the gate. Can you walk, sir?”

“Sure,” John says, turning, adrenaline washing out of him. He grips Lorne’s arm, because his hip and side are hurting for some reason. And his ankle. He limps along, refusing any help beyond Lorne’s shoulder. 

The gate isn’t far. It looks wrong, though. Strange. And where the hell are Rodney and his team? Teyla… Torren. Something about Torren? Was Torren sick this morning before the mission? John can’t remember. 

“Where's Mckay, major? Him and Ronon ok?” John asks. Lorne looks fuzzy and concerned and John's heart rate picks up. He forces it slow and keeps walking. There's the gate. He'll surely get answers soon. 

“Rodney and Ronon are fine, colonel,” Lorne says, hand around John's elbow as he's walked through the gate. 

“Whoa,” John gasps, as they step out on Earth instead of Atlantis. 

He realises again he's in his socks as he straightens into a salute for General Landry, who's stood there with a sardonic look on his face. 

“Colonel. Spot of bother?” Landry says. 

“What do you mean you're ‘on your way’!?? Doctor Gush, he  _ fell down a hole. _ Of course he needs a medical team!”

John grins. That's Rodney. He ambles down the ramp, shoving his hands into his pockets, headed for Rodney's irate voice.

“Rodney, we got a report through. He climbed out, he's mobile, and the only reason I'm not already in there assessing him is you.”

John pokes his head out into the corridor, beaming at his welcome committee: Dr Gush, two nurses in SGC scrubs, Rodney Mckay. 

“Hey there, Rodney. You looking for me? Lookee, LT,” John says, not waiting for Rodney's spluttered answer, spreading his arms for Gush’s inspection. “Good as new. No rescue needed. And if you treat me here, I'm not in the infirmary. You can keep your ‘Damsell’ for someone who didn't just fight an army of bugs and, and, and, sharks… Single handed!”

“Right. Colonel, on the gurney. Now.”

John shrugs. He wouldn't mind lying down, actually. Now he's still, and Rodney's fine, and Lorne said Ronon too and he'd been with Rodney so… John groans, sinking into the waiting darkness. 

* * *

“That Brittish guy John takes out, I dunno his name everyone just calls him English cus he's Welsh… The army's weird,” Rodney trails off. 

“McKay,” Ronon says, pulling his attention back to the laptop screen. “C’mon, I'm stuck on Atlantis with the IOA, tell me what happened.”

“Sorry. John was out with English and he fell down a hole,” Rodney recounts quickly. “English says the path just kind of fell away, taking John with it. He couldn't get down and John couldn't get up, so he chucked down some supplies and went for help. Engineers and ropes kind of help. He says John was responding and agreed on that course of action, Dr Gush says the disorientation was from a headwound, blood loss, the heat, take your pick… English is probably telling the truth.”

“He's ok though?”

“Yes, mostly bruises. He tore up his side a bit on the way down, and his wrist’s badly sprained after he made it worse on the way up, and he twisted his hip, but he's remarkably alright.”

“He climbed out while they coordinated a rescue,” Ronon says, grinning widely, looking incredibly proud. Rodney rolls his eyes.

“Yes, Conan. He  _ stupidly  _ climbed out, making his injuries worse when he could've just waited. Kenan says they found him about a metre down, clinging to a rock, almost passed out. He… He had no boots. He came through the gate… I was up in the viewing…”

Rodney trails off, rubbing his face, and lets himself look at John. He propped his laptop on the table, pulling it away from the bed so he could look away. John's lying smongst pillows, weight tipped away from his bad side. There are steri-strips over the wound near his temple, he looks very white even against the sheets. His wrist is in a brace. He moves his head on the pillow, mumbling questioningly. 

“He had his pants done properly for once, tight around his ankle. To stop the bugs. Lorne said he was out of it on the walk back, kept insisting on going back for us and asking if Torren was better,” Rodney says. “He looked like a kid playing dress up.”

“He's alright, Mckay,” Ronon soothes.

“Always with the bugs,” Rodney says, reaching out to touch his fingers gently against John's bruised cheek. 

“When the IOA gets done with me I can go out with his team again,” Ronon says.

“Yeah, that'd be good. Did the Deadalus get back ok?” Rodney asks. It had taken a trip to Pegasus to check wraith activity and take some of the Pegasus natives back home. Including Teyla. 

“Yep. Teyla sent some stuff. Pictures of Torren mostly.”

John shifts, restless, moaning a bit. Rodney takes his hand away and waits, but it just gets worse so he holds John's shoulder tight in case he tries to dive off the bed. 

“Wake up,” He says, firmly. 

They've learnt the best way to wake John in the infirmary when he's out of it. The hard way. Rodney remembers the time Carson tried to do it gently, early on, and John tore out his IV port and went skedaddling around Atlantis, bare-assed, nothing but the gown on. It took them twenty minutes to catch him, even with the bleeding. It's something about the way people touch him. This time John comes awake all at once but not fighting. He's tense and ready, but he recognises Rodney and relaxes. Rodney keeps hold of his shoulder a minute, not trusting it quite yet. John once relaxed and they’d all believed it and next thing they knew nurse Bishop had been flat on his back, out cold. And then the skedaddling. 

“You're a menace,” Rodney snaps. 

“Um… Yeah,” John whispers, breathy soft. 

“Oi, turn the computer, I want to see,” Ronon grumbles. 

Rodney does, letting John go. Ronon gives a silly little wave and grin, face all loose with relief to see John awake. Rodney feels a pang of guilt that he did such a bad job of being reassuring. He distracts himself stroking John's hair. 

“Did you just rub your head in the dirt? Jeeze,” Rodney says, frowning, finding so much earth in John's hair. 

“Wanted to see the sky,” John says, humming.

“You fell in a hole,” Rodney accuses. 

“And climbed back out,” Ronon adds, giving a clumsy thumbs up. 

“Got lost,” John mumbles, already starting to fall asleep again. 

“Gush says rest is good. Go back to sleep. Did you find yourself again?” Rodney asks, unable to stop himself touching John again, resting a hand on his chest. 

“Yeah. SGC. Teyla's gone. Ronon's coming back,” John says.

“Right,” Ronon says. 

“No bugs, no trophies,” John continues, listing. 

“What?” Rodney says. “You want an award for most goofy accident as the SGC?”

“Tell the LT…” John says, pointing at Ronon with his good hand. His eyes slide closed. 

“Tell me yourself,” Gush says, coming around the curtain. “Dr McKay, that's your half hour I'm afraid. We'll make sure he rests comfortably.”

“Not a damsel,” John says, opening his eyes to glare at Gush.

“Ah. No, quite. I did find out your old call, I think that's-”

“Shhh. Head hurts. Head wound,” John says, eyes sliding to Ronon and Rodney then closing stubbornly. 

Gush grins and checks John's chart before nodding. And setting about kicking Rodney and his laptop out. Rodney takes Ronon to lunch in the canteen and Ronon crows about how much better the food is on Atlantis than at the SGC. It's just not fair. Rodney's stuck here, underground, not even allowed to go through the gate because he's too ‘valuable an asset’. He's pretty sure this is just Landry getting revenge for something. Stopping him going out with Sheppard and stopping him doing stupid things like  _ falling in holes.  _

* * *

John drifts in and out for about a day. Rodney's sometimes there, more and more often as the bug dreams get worse. John keeps waking up covered in creepy-crawlies, tiny legs itching and chittering and scratching and all the worst kinds of ‘-ing’s. Rodney brushes them off calmly, rolling his eyes, calling John dramatic. Gush must get tired of John yelling because he lets Rodney stay lots. John wakes up properly very early in day two and finds Rodney stretched out on his back on the floor, snoring. Cute. John drops things on him until he wakes up and cranks the bed up and gets John water.

“Nuisance,” Rodney mumbles around a yawn, scritching John's head. 

“I'm good now. Let's get out of here,” John says.

Rodney looks like he's going to argue so John gets started turning everything off so there are no alarms triggered by his exodus. He doesn't even have an IV anymore, he's fine. He's out of the bed before Rodney can line up and argument, so Rodney gives in with a sleepy shrug and follows John to his quarters. It's good, because John's in a hospital gown, and Rodney knows where the cameras are to avoid them and save John from flashing the entire SGC. Rodney keeps up a running, low-level grumbling the whole way, but falls happily into bed when they arrive. John curls up on his good side next to him and goes back to sleep. 

He wakes up to his radio squawking. No, Rodney's radio. The shower’s going. John groans, all the aches and hurts that he hadn't felt earlier making themselves known, painkillers must've wore off. He answers the radio with a grunt and listens to a slightly frantic Doctor Gush reporting his disappearance. He puts on his best Canadian and promises to help with the search, then hangs up, burying his head under a pillow. 

“Oi, we need to go back and get you properly discharged with meds and stuff,” Rodney says, slapping John's ass. “I like seeing so much of your butt.”

“LT Gush says there’s a Colonel Sheppard missing. Base seems a bit worried about it. They've got marines searching for him,” John says. Not moving.”’m stayin’ here. You deal.”

Rodney swears at him in quite a friendly manner and radios the docs to tell them John's alive and well and just being a nuisance. Then he bawls them out for mistaking John's voice for his own. It's all very good early morning entertainment, but Rodney drags him back to the infirmary and they jab him with the big needles and take blood and scowl at him. Eventually they let him go with orders to rest, take OTC painkillers, and not bother them. General Landry comes in for a debrief and he's obviously in a super festive mood; he sends Rodney and John to Atlantis. A kind of banishment right now - the city's basically shut down, just a small team there, and the IOA. But, Ronon’s there to meet them, and the food’s good, and no one wants anything from John. He can just sit around in the lounges with Ronon and Rodney, snacking, watching TV, looking at pictures of Torren. Pretty much an excellent outcome to falling in a hole, all things considered. 


End file.
